Sunday, February 3, 2019

Back when people were trying to put collect all the letters and writing about Jesus, someone wrote down a list of the books that they thought should be all together.

This list of books is almost exactly the list of books that became the New Testament.
A few of the books that were added later probably were discovered after a while and then added, but people believe this list of books was put together as early as 140 AD.

That means the list of books in the New Testament in the Bible has been about the same for almost 2,000 years.

Sunday, January 27, 2019

Another part of early Christianity is the Tetramorph.
This word comes from the Greek words "tetra" which means four, and "morph" which means shape.

When people started to put together the writings of the apostles, there were the writings we call the Gospel, that told about Jesus life.

The four books of the Gospel we know are Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

In the Old Testament in the book of Ezekiel, he writes about a vision God gave him showing some creatures that had 4 different faces.
The face of a human, a lion, an ox and an eagle.

Some people believe that those four faces are for the four gospels, and so sometimes in art the four writers of the gospel are shown either sitting next to those animals, or sometimes even with animal heads on human bodies.
Matthew is shown as the human, Mark as the lion, Luke as the Ox, and John as the Eagle.

This way of showing the four writers of the gospel was called the Tetramorph, and it also became a way to talk about the four gospels.

Sunday, January 20, 2019

When Jesus was around, the set of books in the Old Testament was already collected and written and copied by many people.
It wasn't called the "Old" testament yet, because when it was being written there was not a "New" testament.

People were starting to collect and copy the things that the Apostles wrote about Jesus, and the letters that Paul wrote and put them into a book.

The early leaders of the Christian church had to all try and agree on what the right books were to be in the New Testament.
They use the word "Canon" to say that the letters or books are approved.
The word Canon comes from the Greek word κανών which means rule or measuring stick.

So once everyone could agree on the right writings and letters, those would become "Biblical Canon".

Sunday, January 6, 2019

Another part of early Christian history is the book Against Heresies, by Irenaeus.

During the early time of Christianity when people disagreed about what they should believe, there was a group of people called the Gnostics.
They believed that Christ and Jesus were two separate beings.
Like Jesus was a physical body, and Christ was a spirit that lived in him.

The bishop of France named Irenaeus was very upset about this, and decided to write a book saying why they were wrong.

His book was written some time around 180 AD, and many church leaders used that letter to tell people that they believed Gnosticism was not true.

Sunday, December 30, 2018

Another part of early Christian history is the Didache - The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles.

In the time that people were not sure what to believe or how to worship, there was a book people made with a lot of instructions, like some of the ten commandments, the Lord's prayer, and some rules about baptism or fasting.

It was called the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, and sometimes called Didache which is the Greek word for Teaching.
The writings were made some time around the late 100s in AD, and were lost for almost 2000 years.

Sunday, December 23, 2018

In the old Jewish faith, people rested on the seventh day, called the shabbat, which is where we get the name Saturday.

After the Christians started to separate into their own religion, they started to move the day of worship to Sunday.
Part of the idea was that Sunday would be seen as the celebration of the resurrection and freedom from sin on the first day of every week.

Some Christians through the years have changed back to Saturday as the holy day, but others still worship on Sunday.

A fancy word for beliefs about which day is the sabbath is "Sabbatarianism".
First-day Sabbatarianism means that Sunday should be the day of worship.
Seventh-day Sabbatarianism means that Saturday should be the day of worship.
There is even Non-Sabbatarianism, which means that there should not be any special day for worship, you should pick whatever day you want to worship on.

Sunday, December 16, 2018

In 62 AD there was a big fire that burned for 6 days, and burned down many parts of the city of Rome.
No one is sure how the fire started, but after it was done the Roman Emperor Nemo blamed the fire on the Christian people living in Rome.

After that a lot of Christians were treated very badly, and sometimes even killed.

Sunday, December 9, 2018

This was the time after the apostles, where there was a lot of mystery about what people believed.
A lot of people had different ideas about what Christianity should be like, and there were not a lot of very good church leaders for almost a hundred years.

For this time people started to call themselves Christians, but there was a lot of confusion about exactly what types of things people should believe.

People believed different things about Jesus, God and the Holy Spirit, and also weren't sure about the God from the New Testament and the Old Testament.

One of the most famous ones who did write about 2,000 different papers about Christianity was named Origen.

Because of all the confusion, after the Ante-Nicene times people worked to get together to try and talk about how to help everyone agree on what the right way was for Christians to act.

Sunday, December 2, 2018

The word Christian wasn't a word until Jesus came around.
Christian comes from Christ, which comes from the Greek word χριστός (christos) which was the Greek translation of the Hebrew word מָשִׁיחַ‎ (māšîaḥ) which means the messiah, the savior and liberator of the people.

After Jesus came around and had some followers, people started calling them Christians, but it wasn't always used as a nice word.
This mostly started in a town called Antioch, where they called the Apostles Christians.
There were many people who didn't like the followers of Jesus, so calling someone a Christian meant they were trying to call them names, or say that they weren't good people.
Later on some very important Christians like Ignatius of Antioch took on the name with honor, and it became a good word to use.

People also sometimes called Christians Nazarenes, because Jesus was from the town of Nazareth.
Other times people would talk about the Christian belief as "The Way" because of Jesus talking about "I am the way, the truth, and the life."

Sunday, November 25, 2018

Another part of early Christian history was the Split of Christianity and Judaism.

Remember that Jesus was one of the Hebrew people also known as Jewish people.
Some people even called him king of the Jews, and many of his followers were Jewish people.

After Jesus died, people didn't think of themselves and Christians.
They still believed in the things that happened long before, like the days of Abraham, Moses or King David.
Some of them followed the teachings of Jesus, and others did not, but they did not think of themselves as Christians yet, they were just Jewish people who disagreed about Jesus.
People even went to the same churches and sat next to each other for a very long time.

Around 70 AD there were some wars that happened in the area, and some of the people in charge of the churches changed, and Christianity started to split out as its own different religion separate from Judaism.

Sunday, November 18, 2018

We know a little history from the Bible, with Paul and some other people writing around 21 letters and traveling all over.
Some people call this the Apostolic Age because it's the time when the Apostles were teaching people.

These letters (called epistles) were written to people and churches in towns that the apostles were traveling to, so that they could try and tell people about Jesus.

Paul alone traveled all around the countries on the Mediterranean sea, like Italy, Greece, Israel, Turkey and Syria.
Back in those days it was all part of the Roman empire, but it is now split up into different places.

In those days there was no internet, TV, radio or even newspaper so spreading news around was very difficult.
Many people had probably not even heard of Jesus when Paul came to visit, and he went to different towns where people had all sorts of beliefs in different things and he tried to tell people about Jesus.

Sunday, November 4, 2018

Cæsar - bishop of Dyrrachium, also a friend of Epaphroditus.
Mark - Cousin to Barnabas, bishop of Apollonia.
Justus - Bishop of Eleutheropolis, one of the two to be chosen from for the next apostle.
Artemas - bishop of Lystra. His name is listed in the Bible's book of Titus as a friend of Paul's.
Clement - bishop of Sardinia.
Onesihorus - bishop of Corone. Paul wrote about Onesiphorus visiting him while he was in prison in Rome.
Tychicus - bishop of Chalcedon.
Carpus - bishop of Berytus in Thrace. Paul talks about Carpus in the book of 2 Timothy.
Evodus - bishop of Antioch.
Aristarchus - bishop of Apamea. He was with Paul a few times in the Bible, traveling around with him through Rome, Ephesus, Greece and Asia.
Mark, who is also John - bishop of Bibloupolis.
Zenas - bishop of Diospolis.
Philemon - bishop of Gaza.
Aristarchus -
Pudes -
Trophimus - who was martyred along with Paul.

Sunday, October 21, 2018

The next two disciples listed were also with Cæsarea as being friends of Paul, and leaders of the churches.

Cephas - bishop of Iconium
Sosthenes - bishop of Colophonia

Another of the seventy was Tychicus - bishop of Colophonia.

He is mentioned a few different times in the Bible by Paul, where he was being sent to different churches to help teach the people there about Jesus.
Paul talks about Tychicus in the books of Acts, Ephesians, Colossians, Titus and Timothy, so he was a hard worker that Paul could send around to help people all over.

Sunday, September 30, 2018

Jason was talked about in the Bible as a person that helped out the Apostle Paul when he was in Thessalonica, because some people who did not like Jesus were angry with Paul for talking to people about Jesus.

Jason was born in Tarsus, and Paul gave him the job to try and help lead the church in Tarsus.

He traveled around to tell a lot of people about Jesus, and was thrown in jail in a place called Corfu.
The king there did not like people becoming Christian, so he fought with Jason and other disciples, but eventually the king became a Christian and then the disciples were free to live there and tell people about God.

Sunday, September 23, 2018

Paul talks about him in the Bible as being one of the early leaders of the Christian churches in Antioch, and people believe he was one of the early bishops in the town of Laodicea, which is now part of Turkey.